You can now play Counter-Strike on your PSVita, thanks to an OpenGL port

Ever wanted to play the original fan-favourite Counter-Strike, straight out of 1999, on your PSVita?

Well, now there's nothing but your own lack of willpower stopping you. Developer and hacker fgsfdsfgs has updated their PSVita port of the Half-Life engine, known as vitaXash, to version 4, adding support for the original Counter-Strike as well as UI and stability improvements.

This port is based upon the well-known Xash3D-FWGS, which is also available on various platforms such as Windows, Android and iOS – meaning you can play cross-platform Counter-Strike games with Xash3D users on Android and iOS for instance. (This port does not currently support local hosting, however, so if you wanted to host a CS game from your PSVita you're out of luck.) Additionally, the port requires the use of VitaGL, an OpenGL port for the PSVita that's essential to making any Half-Life game run at a playable speed on the Vita.

So how's the experience? It's...alright. Framerates are barely playable, with the game maintaining 20+ FPS more or less consistently at native resolution. The controls, however, are rather fiddly and need more work (both touch and gamepad are supported, but neither is particularly good).

An additional perk; this engine has mod support (albeit limited mod support at the moment) for any mods that don't require custom code (sorry TF2 lovers, not just yet); this means mods such as They Hunger 1, CAGED and Afraid of Monsters are all supported, as well as the known support for Half-Life Uplink, Half-Life: Blue Shift and Half-Life: Opposing Force. M<od support with custom code should be expected in a future release, so don't lose hope yet; this tweak has potentially boundless potential.

If you're a veteran of this tweak, you can take a look at the release changelog below:

Stability improvements due to expanded memory mode (allows an extra 109MB of RAM to be used) and recent vitaGL improvements

A new and improved launcher UI

Support for more screen resolutions for game scaling

General performance and stability improvements

Improvements to both touch and analogue controls

Support for Counter-Strike

General bug fixes

Installation isn't too difficult. You need the original game files if you plan to play Half-Life, Counter-Strike or any other Half-Life engine-based games on your PSVita. However, if you don't have the full game files, you can also snag a demo version.

Copy the valve directory from your Half-Life installation (preferably the Steam version, but WON or stuff like Day One probably works as well) to ux0:/data/xash3d/ on your PS Vita. If you don't have access to a Half-Life installation, you can use the data files from the free demo version of HL, Half-Life Uplink. In that case, just extract this archive to ux0:/ on your Vita.

Extract data.zip to the ux0:/ directory on your PSVita. Replace all files if asked.

Install the VPK file.

And that's all there is to the procedure. You can download the tweak and all needed files (aside from the games themselves) from the GitHub page linked below:

What do you guys think? Will you grab this tweak for your PSVita so you can go rushing B like it's 1999? Let us know in the comments, or post over on our forums.